Michael

Hope you and Connie are safe. Michael came in with a vengeance, and I'm sure there will be a lot of damage in the area. We barely got any rain down here.

Did you see Brett Adair's video on Facebook? Crazy.

I don't think I would drive around in those conditions. If your vehicle stalls out you are at the mercy of the storm and surge. We stayed with my nephew in Ft. Lauderdale during Irma and he kept going outside to assess the damage, as oak tree limbs were falling all around his driveway. I told him to come inside, as the oak limbs were bringing down power lines. The debris flying around can hit you like a bullet. We found pieces of debris embedded in the side of his home. Then his street flooded, but thankfully, only a couple feet deep.

That was his assignment from the media provider he works for.

Tell them to get in the vehicle too. Reminds me of the war correspondents who followed us around in Vietnam. I didn't want to be there but they chose to come. There has to be a better way to make a living.

Yeah, we are still alive. This was a good excuse to take a break from the internet for a few days.

So glad to hear that everyone is okay....

-Tonya

Glad everything is ok. Internet breaks can be a blessing. LOL

Been through the devastation 3 times in my life. While the first impulse is to say the community will never recover, it is amazing what people can do when working together.
Sadly, there is loss of lives, and it's harder to recover from that.

I cannot imagine going through that. Every time a natural disaster strikes a part of our country, I think about how horrible it would be to go through that, having to evacuate, losing your home, possibly your family, friends and pets.

We are not as affected by wildfires here, we very rarely have cyclones, and being in the sound we are protected from most tropical storms. We do get some pretty big wind storms, every year (we're approaching that season soon), and while earthquakes are not common, they are predicting a severe one, at some point, and that will be devastating.

We did have a devastating mud slide that killed 43 people, and I saw the community come together as you mentioned. It is hard to recover from, but when joined together, it helps. I know it's a drop in the bucket compared to the devastation happening with wildfires and hurricanes.

We had a bridge collapse a couple years back on I-5, from a truck that hit a support beam. Some cars fell into the river below (thankfully, no one died), and we started talking about what would happen if something caused bridges and overpasses to collapse (relatively realistic with a major earthquake), there would be no evacuating, all egress routes would be destroyed.

Mother nature is incredibly powerful, and angry.

After Irma my brother sent pictures of what was left on his street, and there wasn't much but huge piles of debris. He helped his neighbors sift through the rubble of their former homes to find valuables or keepsakes. He said one of his elderly neighbors was sitting on the ground crying. That was understandable, but when my brother told the guy that FEMA would help, but he needed to contact them immediately, the guy said he already did and they won't help. He said the problem was that he had homeowner's insurance, and he has to pay out thousands of dollars under the provisions of his policy and FEMA won't get involved. It's ironic that FEMA quickly helped those without insurance, but those who had insurance ended up worse off than those without it.

Still no power at the house. :shrugs:

Oh bummer. Hope the generator has enough power to run the air conditioner.

That would be miserable. A whole house generator would be so worth it. I'm set for a couple days with my solar "generators," but after that it would get old.

When we stayed at my nephew's place in Ft. Lauderdale the power went out for a few days. Now I know what a Thanksgiving turkey feels like. I couldn't sleep for 2 days and was well done when we finally got home. The bad part was that Irma passed right through our area and our power was only out for a few hours here.

Well, the generator worked like a champ. But it only runs the other buildings and not the house. It was bought for the SerpenCo business to keep the animals alive during an extended power outage.

Connie and I bailed out on Tuesday and headed over to the east coast of Florida (Palm Coast). Just got back this afternoon, and power had just been restored this morning. Had a friend checking the place for us, and I told him that as long as the generator was running, then power was still out. So power was out for nearly 5 full days. We were coming back today, regardless. Staying in a motel like the Hampton Inn gets old after a while.

Just had some large branches at the top of a water oak tree (I think that is what it is) snap off and fall in front of the carport. Lots of debris everywhere shaken out of trees, of course. But no damage anywhere that we have found yet. So we were lucky.

I highly recommend evacuating when things like this happen. It's pretty stressful worrying about losing your house, but it would be a WHOLE LOT more stressful if you are still in it while thinking that might happen.

Someone on one of my other sites posted the link to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ofAJSqpLM



That is Toucans in Mexico Beach. Connie and I have eaten there before. But looks like that won't happen again, as Michael appears to have just wiped it off of the map completely.

Sounds like a good time to rewire the generator into the house. There's nothing to cool in the outbuildings is there?

Back in 1992 my son, brothers, and I were always flying down to the Keys to fish. We rented a modest ranch style home built on pillars on Big Pine. It was on a double lot with mature citrus and banana trees surrounded by chain link fence to keep the deer out. We found out the place was for sale, so ran to the real estate office. The house and landscaping were beautiful, so we were going to buy it with our partnership. Unfortunately, someone bought that house just an hour before we got there. Hurricane Andrew was on the way, so we quickly flew home. It was a good thing we didn't buy the place as Andrew ripped off the roof and siding, and completely leveled the lots, down to bare ground.

Twolunger said:

Sounds like a good time to rewire the generator into the house. There's nothing to cool in the outbuildings is there?

Click to expand...

That would be a good amount of work to do. The generator and the propane tank would need to be completely relocated to be closer to the house. And then we would not have the water pump getting power.

So I think the way it is will suffice. Worst comes to worst, we can just set up cots in the old reptile building and camp out there for the duration.

Which reminds me, I need to check to see how much propane is remaining in that tank. Might need to get it topped off.

Does anyone know the practical lifespan of propane when stored in a tank?

The experts say propane can last indefinitely, however, the tanks usually need recertification. I read that tanks now have to be recertified after 10 years instead of 12. I had a 1,000 gallon tank in Michigan and the propane company refused to fill it because it needed recertification. Then I reminded them that it was their tank that I was leasing, so I soon had a a certified one dropped off.